


need somewhere to begin

by doubtthestars



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:52:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubtthestars/pseuds/doubtthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anthology of the War</p><p>1//The first time she officially meets Poe, she divulges secrets that aren't hers to tell.<br/>2// If he had been born in any other family, Ben Solo would have been a soldier.<br/>3// When she sees Rey, Leia only has a brief moment to reflect on all of their wrongs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i. rey

**Author's Note:**

> forgive me for any mistakes. I've only seen the film once. I'm due for a repeat.

The sparse medical staff in the long-term section of the field hospital set up has gotten used to her presence, silent and focused on Finn's face. She spends the days ruminating and talking to General Organa. They had the complete map and somehow the General thought Rey was the one for the job. 

"You have his lightsaber and you need Luke to train you. Chewie's overseeing the retrofitting of the," She pauses, looking away for a moment and Rey feels like an outsider poaching opportunity where she shouldn't be. Han Solo hadn't offered her the job, not really, but Chewbacca and Leia agreed it was only right for her to take the freighter ships as her own. "the Millenium Falcon. You two can leave after the engineers are done." 

Rey doesn't protest, but something in the General's look tells her she didn't do a good enough job of hiding it.

Her thoughts go to needs and wants. Both Leia and Ben (she couldn't be scared of a name, she refused to use the lie. Han Solo died by his son's hand, not Kylo Ren's) had said she needed a teacher. All she wanted was to go back to Jakku and help the droid, instead she was embroiled in the fight of light and dark and _the force_. Her heart sped up, blinking back the memory of the fight. Everything had been so fast, but the call of that terrible weapon, the lightsaber, flooded her when she saw it in Finn's hand. 

Ben Solo wielded his power barely restrained and Rey knew it was the wrong way, like trying to contain fire without heeding the risk of getting burned. The lightsaber in her hand was fluid water, and the words in her head calming. _The force is in everything_ so she called to everything to get through the duel, to not fail.

If she went through with the mission, she would be trained by the same hand that trained Ben Solo. 

"I don't think I can do this." She barely touched Finn's shoulder with her fingertips before she sensed another person at the doorway. It was the pilot, BB-8's master. 

"You're Rey, right? The kid from Jakku who helped BB-8 and stole the Millenium Falcon back." She bristled at being called a child and a thief at once. Rey took steps back, awkwardly positioned between her usual seat and Finn's resting body with nowhere to compose herself. 

"Han stole it back. I just got it off the planet." He looks a little more contrite at the mention of Han, shifting to his right foot, still not making a move to come into the room.

"I'm Poe. I didn't have time to check on Finn before. The doctors say anything on why he hasn't woken up yet?" Rey edges out closer to the curtain wall that separated the next patient's area, silently giving Poe the room to see Finn better. He ambles over to the other side of the bed.

"B-Kylo Ren's not someone you want to fight. He took a hit to the back. They think it's a miracle he's still breathing." Rey doesn't look at him, the prickly feeling of eyes settle on her as she focuses on Finn. She wishes she could use the force to help him get better. Finn was the only one on base she felt comfortable around, less of a stranger and more of a friend. He saved her life, or at least tried to rescue her and got this in return.

"He's a mean son of a bitch, pulled the thoughts out of my head like he wanted me to feel every slice of pain." Her eyes dart to him by their own volition. They shared the same experience, torture by invasion. The bell of 'wrong, wrong, wrong' started up again in her head. Ben Solo was a monster for using her thoughts like a magic trick. Plucking them out of thin air without regard to sentiment. 

_The beach was a happier moment. The ocean, an escape from the world._

She clenched her teeth. 

"I thought I was a goner. If Finn hadn't helped me escape...well I probably wouldn't be here. I thought he was going to kill me with my own phaser blast, stopped it right in mid-air."

Her hands shake so she balls them into fists, but it doesn't stop the shaking. She turns away from Finn and Poe, trying to control herself. The legends said the dark side would have a Sith and his apprentice. The General had told her how her son was turned, seduced to the other side of the fight as a cautionary tale or just because Rey knew the long-held secret. 

"He's a coward, running away from his family, hiding behind a stupid mask." She didn't have a family anymore and he gave it up for what? Her shoulder tensed at the concerned hand of the resistance's best pilot. 

"Rey, you know who he is?" She faced forward, shorter but defiantly looking up at him, anger seeking out a target. 

"He's the General's son. Ben Solo. He killed his father. He killed Han and I felt it." She felt anger and pain and death, snapped out of it only by Chewie's cry of loss. He had faced his own father and threw him over the bridge like a sack of unwanted parts. The lightsaber had shown her Anakin Skywalker become Darth Vader. Why would anyone want to be like him.

"Hey, hey, you're right here. Stay with me. Finn needs you to stay here with him, alright?" She snapped back to reality, Poe's hands on her upper arms, head ducked to be at eye level. She feels dizzy, can't breathe right.

"I can't. I can't stay. I'm going to get Luke Skywalker and bring him back and I don't know how. I don't want to use the Force. I don't want to kill anybody. I just wanted to go back home. I'm nobody. I can't fight the First Order or Ky-Kylo Ren." Her eyes burn, watering. Her throat seizing with fear. She hangs her head, not wanting Poe to see her cry. 

Vulnerability makes her shoulders curve inward. 

"I'm gonna hug you okay?" She coughs out a weak laugh. At least he was polite.

"Okay," the whispered assent saw his arms go around her, warm, pressing her loosely to him. It wasn't suffocating like she thought. Leia had been the last one to hug her. Her heart burned at what little importance Ben Solo gave to what he had given up. 

A family.


	2. interlude: kylo ren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for mood: [x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSkb0kDacjs)
> 
> force ghost!grandpa would not approve tbh. Someone save Ben Solo from himself.

If he had been born into another family, Ben Solo would have been a soldier.

"What is Korriban?" Ben had found the word in one of the old books in the library. Luke gently took the tome back, meeting eyes with Leia across the room. Ben was inquisitive, getting his nose into things he wouldn't understand and pursuing them until he did. He had taught himself Corellian as a way to pass the time on base when the Millennium Falcon was grounded. 

He was as impulsive as his mother with the attitude of his father. 

"It's in the Outer Rim I think. Stop reading those old history books. We're going on a trip. Pack your bag. It'll be a few days until we get to the lagoon." Ben immediately jumped off his chair to run to his room. His Uncle would take him on hiking trips to interesting places sometimes off-world, sometimes not. Luke had taught Ben that nature was connected to the Force and being in it would help him focus on feeling it. He could already push things, making it a game, hiding things from Chewie on the ship or flipping the pages of a book faster.

"Don't let him co-pilot this time, Luke, and don't go into another system without checking in." Leia always worried. Her son with the last Jedi would always garner the wrong sort of attention. It was luck that Luke had outgrown adventure, feeling the heavy weight of his power and the need for balance. He liked isolated, wild places more than the feeling of overgrown cities. 

"We'll be careful and it's not my fault you had Han's kid." Leia shoots him a sharp look, their sibling wavelength enough to make Luke laugh at the non-response. Well, he had brought them together at any rate.

*

Kylo Ren sifts a handful of red sand from the ground, crushes it into powder in his glove. Master Snoke had sent him on this mission alone, to see what the light side had done to reach their precious balance, to see the grave site of the dark.

Moraband was deserted, the craggy mountains silencing the wind in the temple, the far off echo sounds like screams and Ben joins them. Every step is to a new future, one where Ben Solo would be no more and Kylo Ren would ensure his greatness. He would make the crystals surrounded in darkness of his path, of the history that was forgotten and erased by the Republic.

He would forge a weapon to be proud of.

*

"Look at this, Ben." Han pointed out the open trunk for him. Among the strange artifacts was a rusted weapon. Ben snatched it up, swinging it with both hands, testing the weight. The old blade was dinged and the handle split but he was fascinated by the way it cut through the air. His uncle wouldn't even let him touch his lightsaber. 

"Can I keep it?" His father ruffled his hair, stretching out a hand to take it from him. Han examined it, humming and hawing comically, twirling it in one hand in a move that left Ben wide-eyed. 

"I don't know, looks more like junk than something to play with, but it came with the payment so it might be worth something if we can find someone to fix it." He put it back in the chest, covering it with some tarp. Ben wouldn't give up. He wanted the sword to train with and learn. His mother hadn't approved of him carrying a blaster so maybe a sword would be better. 

"Please, you can find someone to fix it. You know lots of people, dad." He pleaded. 

Han smiled, "We'll see if your mother likes the idea. Luke won't want another teacher butting in though, we'll have to talk to both of them." 

His eleventh birthday brought a restored sword and a new teacher to meet him during the week for lessons. His Uncle would supervise to see which method would work best for Ben to grow into when he could control his own lightsaber. Leia still thought he was too young to be in the mindset of war but the First Order wouldn't spare a child and a sword would take more discipline than pointing and shooting a gun.

*

The steady thwack, thwack, cross of their blades gave him no room to think. It was a routine between them. Hux wasn't force-sensitive at all but he had been trained for more than strategy to become the youngest general overseeing the plans of the Supreme Leader. It was an even match between them, a furious pace that Kylo meant but Hux only entertained. 

They had to work together, but both knew if they had the chance, they would kill the other.

_You use your power like a child with a toy, Kylo Ren._ _**I will do better, Master.**_ Emotion led to distraction, led to mistakes that Hux took immediate advantage of, knocking his sword out of his grasp. Anger crackled at his fingertips as Hux took a step back, satisfied with the result. He force-held him in place making it as painful as possible as his other hand waved for the sword.

"We'll go again." He ordered.

*

His old sword was kept by Leia, hoping that one day she would be able to give it back to its rightful master.


	3. i. leia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw the film again and I'm trying to solidify my headcanons.
> 
> *this is working on the assumption that Rey is Luke's daughter.

The moment Han is gone and Ben has surrendered to the darkness of his heart, Leia feels a tendril of sympathy amid the crushing grief. She can't acknowledge Luke's reassurance because he was the one who abandoned them all after Ben turned to the dark. He had left with Ben and Han had felt he was out of place with the Rebellion, with the Skywalker legacy and their Force. It had all crumbled from there.

Leia had been the only one left to stay, the only one who could lead and plan and wait.

When she sees Rey, she only has a brief moment to reflect on all of their wrongs. For all the Skywalker children had been broken in one way or the other by the power in their veins. Leia never agreed to Luke's plan. It had felt too much like their history repeating, their father's mistakes staining every step forward they were willing to make. 

Luke hadn't been in the mindset to handle raising a child after Ben's defection, and Leia had fought him with every ounce of motherly rage to let her keep her safe, to give her niece a chance to know her family.

Her brother used the only weapon left to him: their mother. Padme's death had been their father's breaking point. If Leia harbored another Skywalker child, it would put them both in more danger. Luke needed her to stay as safe and far away from their family's trouble and Leia had to stay in secrecy.

"I'm not trying to keep you from the fight, Leia. I'm just giving you a good reason to not put yourself in reckless danger. There's a chance Ben could come back, just like I could go dark. If anything happened to you...Ben wouldn't have anything left to come back to." Leia wiped at her tears angrily, glaring at the exhausted Luke. 

"You're forcing my hand, Luke. Don't give me that Mynock dung about going dark. I may not use the Force like you do but I can damn well feel it. You're not the only one hurt in this." His countenance went stiff and her brother became a stranger for an instant. His cloak giving his shadow more prominence. 

"I would. I would if I lost her." He cracked and the same old Luke shone through, pleading for her to understand. "It's better this way, she doesn't know me as her father and she'll be taken care of. The First Order will pursue me as the last Skywalker and that's how it'll stay. Promise me, Leia. Promise me you'll do your best to stay away from anyone who could use Rey against me." The unsaid _including your son_ lanced through her heart but she promised solemnly. 

It was the last time she saw Luke. 

But Rey was in front of her, a fighter and filled her with hope. A small part of her family come back only in the face of losing another. Leia hugged her, overwhelmed by the rush of love she had to hold back for so long, the knowledge of her secret niece buried carefully. 

_The force manifests itself faster in girls._ She remembered Luke saying and she knew it to be true with Rey holding her own against her son mere hours after her awakening. Pride and sorrow mingled in her breast. 

Leia was going to have to let Rey go to find Luke. 

She was hopeful that their family would be together again someday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My math is probs shaky but I'm giving Ben about five years with the dark side. Rey being around three years younger than him and being shipped off at around seven years old. Putting them at 18 and 21 in current canon. 
> 
> thanks for reading and all the kudos.


End file.
